Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run...

Watership Down by Richard Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Younger daughter, who is on the autistic spectrum, needed a novel for her independent reading project, so I googled "middle school books" and up came Watership Down which I'd never got around to reading. Perfect, I thought. It's about animals, which younger daughter adores, and there's a well-reviewed animated film which will provide badly-needed visuals for her very concrete-thinking mind.

In preparation for helping her get this read over the Christmas holidays, I downloaded an audio version from our public library, and listened to it on bus commutes. Ralph Cosgrove's narration is lively and doesn't distract the listener from the story. I particularly enjoyed his portrayal of Kehaar the gull as a straight-talking Scandinavian. Three things you need to know about this novel: it's gripping; it's dated; it's looooong.

Adams tells us in the forward that the novel came out of stories he would tell his young daughters on lengthy car rides. Apparently, it was the girls who suggested the stories were good enough to be written down. I can see why. This is the epic tale of a group of rabbits, led by the heroic and self-effacing hero Hazel, who flee their warren on the basis of the mystical warnings of Hazel's psychic brother Fiver. Their journey to establish a new rabbit colony in Watership Down in Hampshire is dangerous and full of death-defying deeds. (I trust it isn't a spoiler to say that surprisingly few rabbits die during the course of this novel.)

Dated? Well, it was published in 1972, and despite the fact that Adams was writing these stories for his daughters, all the main characters are male. We get a hint of heroism from the doe-rabbit Hyzenthlay who helps in the escape from the oppressive warren Efrafa, but she barely figures in the story and few of the other does are even given names. It is clear that Hazel and his fellow-bucks expect little from the female rabbits except for breeding purposes. Adams includes a rather quaint apologetic passage explaining that rabbits are practical and not romantic by nature -- as if the attitudes of the males in the story somehow differs from the attitudes of men of Adams' generation. (Adams' military background is very evident throughout.)

That said, it's an entertaining and clever book, but it does go on, including four or five rabbit legends which, although illuminating, break up and slow down the narrative. It's going to be tough going over Christmas. I wonder if younger daughter will ever forgive me.

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